Definition of Brahminism

By Brahminism is meant the complex religion and social
system which grew out of the polytheistic nature-worship of the
ancient Aryan conquerors of northern India, and came, with the
spread of their dominion, to be extended over the whole country,
maintaining itself, not without profound modifications, down to the
present day. In its intricate modern phases it is generally known as
Hinduism.

I. BRAHMIN TEXTS

Our knowledge of Brahminism in its earlier stages is derived from
its primitive sacred books, originally oral compositions, belonging
to the period between 1500-400 B.C.

First of all, there are four
Vedas (veda means wisdom) dating from 1500 to 800 B.C., and
consisting

of a collection of ancient hymns (riks),the so-called Rig-Veda,
in praise of the many gods;

of the Sama-veda, compiled from parts of the Rig-Veda as a
song-service for the soma-sacrifice;

of the Yajur-Veda, a liturgy composed partly of ancient hymns
and partly of other prayers and benedictions to be used in the
various forms of sacrifice; and

of the Atharva-Veda, a collection of popular exorcisms and
magical incantations largely inherited from primitive Aryan days.

Next in order are the Brahmanas (about 1000-600 B.C.). They are a
series of verbose and miscellaneous explanations of the texts,
rites, and customs found in each of the four Vedas, composed
expressly for the use of the Brahmins, or priests.
They are followed
(800-500 B.C.) by the so-called Upanishads, concerned chiefly with
pantheistic speculations on the nature of deity and the end of man;
and lastly, by the Sutras (600-400 B.C.), which are compendious
guides to the proper observance of the rites and customs. The most
important are the Grhya-Sutras, or house-guides, treating of
domestic rites, and the Dharma-sutras, or law-guides, which were
manuals of religious and social customs. Being meant for layman as
well as priest, they reflect the popular, practical side of
Brahminism, whereas the Brahmanas and Upanishads show us the
religion on its priestly, speculative side. Closely related to the
law-guides is the justly famed metrical treatise,
Manava-Dharma-Sastra, known in English as the Laws of Manu. It
belongs probably to the fifth century B.C. These, together with the
two sacred epics of a later age, the "Ramayana," and the
"Mahabharata," embrace what is most important in sacred Brahmin
literature.

II. EARLY BRAHMINISM OR VEDISM

The religion of the Vedic period
proper was comparatively simple. It consisted in the worship of many
deities, great and small, the personified forces of nature.
Prominent among these were

Varuna, the all-embracing heaven, maker and lord of all
things and upholder of the moral law;

the sun-god, variously known as

Surya, the enemy of darkness and bringer of blessings; as

Pushan the nourisher;

Mitra, the omniscient friends of the good, and the avenger of
deceit; as

Savitar the enlightener, arousing men to daily activity, and as

Vishnu, said to have measured the earth in three great strides and

to have given the rich pastures to mortals;

the god of the air, Indra, like Mars, also, the mighty god
of war, who set free from the cloud-serpent Ahi (or Vritra), the
quickening rain;

Rudra, later known as Siva, the blessed one, the god of the
destructive thunderstorm, an object of dread to evil-doers, but a
friend to the good;

Agni, the fire-god, the friend and benefactor of man,
dwelling on their hearths, and bearing to the gods their prayers and
sacrificial offerings;

Soma, the god of that mysterious plant whose inebriating
juice was so dear to the gods and to man, warding off disease,
imparting strength and securing immortality.

There were no temples in this early period. On a small mound of
earth or of stones the offering was made to the gods, often by the
head of the family, but in the more important and complicated
sacrifices by the priest, or Brahmin, in union with the householder.
The object of every sacrifice was to supply strengthening food to
the gods and to secure blessings in return. Human victims, though
rare, were not wholly unknown, but animal victims were at this
period in daily use. First in importance was the horse, then the ox
or cow, the sheep, and the goat. Offerings of clarified butter,
rice, wheat, and other kinds of grain were also very common. But
dearer to the gods than any of these gifts, and rivaling the
horse-sacrifice in solemnity, was the offering of the inebriating
juice of the Soma-plant, the so-called Soma-sacrifice. Hymns of
praise and petitions, chiefly for the good things of life, children,
health, wealth, and success in undertakings, accompanied these
sacrificial offerings. But the higher needs of the soul were not
forgotten. In hymns of Varuna, Mitra, and the other gods there are
striking texts expressing a sense of guilt and asking for
forgiveness. At a time when the earlier Hebrew scriptures were
silent as to the rewards and punishments awaiting man in the future
life, we find the ancient rik-bards giving repeated expression to
their belief in a heaven of endless bliss for the just, and in an
abyss of darkness for the wicked.

Devotion to the Pitris (Fathers), or dead relatives, was also a
prominent element in their religion. Although the Pitris mounted to
the heavenly abode of bliss, their happiness was not altogether
independent of the acts of devotion shown them by the living. It
could be greatly increased by offerings of Soma, rice, and water;
for like the gods they were thought to have bodies of air-like
texture, and to enjoy the subtile essence of food. Hence, the
surviving children felt it a sacred duty to make feast-offerings,
called Sraddhas, at stated times to their departed Pitris. In return
for these acts of filial piety, the grateful Pitris protected them
from harm and promoted their welfare. Lower forms of nature-worship
also obtained. The cow was held in reverence. Worship was given to
trees and serpents. Formulae abounded for healing the diseased,
driving off demons, and averting evil omens. Witchcraft was dreaded,
and recourse to ordeals was common for the detection of guilt.

III. POPULAR BRAHMINISM

In the period that saw the production of the Brahmanas and the
Upanishads, the Vedic religion underwent a twofold change. On the
practical side there was an exuberant growth of religious rites and
of social restrictions and duties, while on the theoretical side,
Vedic belief in the efficacy of personal deities was subordinated to
a pantheistic scheme of salvation. Thus the earlier religion
developed on the one hand into popular, exoteric Brahminism, and on
the other hand into priestly, esoteric Brahminism. The former is
reflected in the Brahmanas and the Sutras; the latter in the Upanishads.

The transformation to popular Brahminism was largely due to the
influence of the Brahmins, or priests. Owing to their excessive
fondness for symbolic words and forms, the details of ritual became
more and more intricate, some assuming so elaborate a character as
to require the services of sixteen priests. The sacrifice partook of
the nature of a sacramental rite, the due performance of which was
sure to produce the desired end, and thus became an all-important
center around which the visible and invisible world revolved. Hence
it merited liberal fees to the officiating priests. Still it was not
a mere perfunctory rite, for if performed by an unworthy priest it
was accounted as both useless and sacrilegious. In keeping with this
complicated liturgy was the multitude of prayers and rites which
entered into the daily life of both priest and layman. The daily
recitation of parts of the Vedas, now venerated as divine
revelation, was of first importance, especially for the Brahmins. It
was a sacred duty for every individual to recite, morning and
evening, the Savitri, a short prayer in honor of the vivifying sun.
A scrupulous regard for ceremonial purity, surpassing even that of
the Jewish Pharisee, gave rise to an endless succession of
purifactory rites, such as baths, sprinkling with water, smearing
with ashes or cow-dung, sippings of water, suppressions of
breath--all sacramental in character and efficacious for the
remission of sin. There is reason to believe that the consciousness
of guilt for sin committed was keen and vivid, and that in the
performance of these rites, so liable to abuse, a penitential
disposition of soul was largely cultivated.

In popular Brahminism of this period the idea of retribution for sin
was made to embrace the most rigorous and far-reaching consequences,
from which, save by timely penance, there was no escape. As every
good action was certain of future recompense, so every evil one was
destined to bear its fruit of misery in time to come. This was the
doctrine of karma (action) with which the new idea of rebirth was
closely connected. While the lasting bliss of heaven was still held
out to the just, different fates after death were reserved for the
wicked, varying, according to the nature and amount of guilt, from
long periods of torture in a graded series of hells, to a more or
less extensive series of rebirths in the forms of plants, animals,
and men. From the grade to which the culprit was condemned, he had
to pass by slow transition through the rest of the ascending scale
till his rebirth as a man of honorable estate was attained.

This doctrine gave rise to restrictive rules of conduct that
bordered on the absurd. Insects, however repulsive and noxious,
might not be killed; water might not be drunk till it was first
strained, lest minute forms of life be destroyed; carpentry,
basket-making, working in leather, and other similar occupations
were held in disrepute, because they could not be carried on without
a certain loss of animal and plant life. Some zealots went so far as
to question the blamelessness of tilling the ground on account of
the unavoidable injury done to worms and insects. But on the other
hand, the Brahmin ethical teaching in the legitimate sphere of right
conduct is remarkably high. Truthfulness, obedience to parents and
superiors, temperance, chastity, and almsgiving were strongly
inculcated. Though allowing, like other religions of antiquity,
polygamy and divorce, it strongly forbade adultery and all forms of
unchastity. It also reprobated suicide, abortion, perjury, slander,
drunkenness, gambling, oppressive usury, and wanton cruelty to
animals. Its Christianlike aim to soften the hard side of human
nature is seen in its many lessons of mildness, charity towards the
sick, feeble, and aged, and in its insistence on the duty of
forgiving injuries and returning good for evil. Nor did this high
standard of right conduct apply simply to external acts. The
threefold division of good and bad acts into thought, words, and
deeds finds frequent expression in Brahmánic teaching.

Intimately bound up in the religious teaching of Brahminism was the
division of society into rigidly defined castes. In the earlier,
Vedic period there had been class distinctions according to which
the warrior class (Kshatriyas, or Rajanas) stood first in dignity
and importance, next the priestly class (Brahmins), then the farmer
class (Vaisyas), and last of all, the servile class of conquered
natives (Sudras). With the development of Brahminism, these four
divisions of society became stereotyped into exclusive castes, the
highest place of dignity being usurped by the Brahmins. As teachers
of the sacred Vedas, and as priests of the all-important sacrifices,
they professed to be the very representatives of the gods and the
peerage of the human race. No honor was too great for them, and to
lay hands on them was a sacrilege. One of their chief sources of
power and influence lay in their exclusive privilege to teach the
youth of the three upper castes, for education then consisted
largely in the acquisition of Vedic lore, which only priests could
teach. Thus the three upper castes alone had the right to know the
Vedas and to take part in the sacrifices, and Brahminism, far from
being a religion open to all, was exclusively a privilege of birth,
from which the despised caste of Sudras was excluded.

The rite of initiation into Brahminism was conferred on male
children only, when they began their studies under a Brahmin
teacher, which took place generally in the eighth year of the
Brahmin, and in the eleventh and twelfth years for the Kshatriya and
the Vaisya respectively. It consisted in the investiture of the
sacred cord, a string of white cotton yarn tired together at the
ends, and worn like a deacon's stole, suspended on the left
shoulder. The investiture was a sort of sacrament in virtue of which
the youth was freed from guilt contracted from his parents and
became Dvi-ja, twice-born, with the right to learn the sacred Vedic
texts and to take part in the sacrifices. The period of studentship
was not long for members of the warrior and farmer castes, but for
the young Brahmin, who had to learn all the Vedas by heart, it
consumed nine years or more. During this period, the student was
subjected to severe moral discipline. He had to rise before the sun,
and was not allow to recline until after sunset. He was denied rich
and dainty foods, and what he ate at his two daily meals he had to
beg. He was expected to observe the strictest chastity. He was bound
to avoid music, dancing, gambling, falsehood, disrespect to
superiors and to the aged, covetousness, anger, and injury to animals.

Marriage was held to be a religious duty for every twice-born. It
was generally entered upon early in life, not long after the
completion of the time of studentship. Like the initiation rite, it
was a solemn sacramental ceremony. It was an imperative law that the
bride and groom should be of the same caste in the principal
marriage; for, as polygamy was tolerated, a man might take one or
more secondary wives from the lower castes. For certain grave
reasons, the household might repudiate his wife and marry another,
but a wife on her part had no corresponding right of divorce. If her
husband died, she was expected to remain for the rest of her life in
chaste widowhood, if she would be honored on earth, and happy with
him in heaven. The later Hindu practice known as the Suttee, in
which the bereaved wife threw herself on the funeral pyre of her
husband, seems at this period to have been unknown. All knowledge of
the Vedic texts was withheld from woman, but she had the right to
participate with her husband in the sacrifices performed for him by
some officiating priest. One important sacrifice remained in his own
hands--the morning and evening offering of hot milk, butter, and
grain to the fire on the hearth, which was sacred to Agni, and was
kept always burning.

A strong tendency to asceticism asserted itself in the Brahminism of
this period. It found expression in the fasts preceding the great
sacrifices, in the severe penances prescribed for various kinds of
sin, in the austere life exacted of the student, in the conjugal
abstinence to be observed for the first three days following
marriage and on certain specified days of the month, but, above all,
in the rigorous life of retirement and privation to which not a few
devoted their declining years. An ever increasing number of
householders, chiefly Brahmins, when their sons had grown to man's
estate, abandoned their homes and spent the rest of their lives as
ascetics, living apart from the villages in rude huts, or under the
shelter of trees, eating only the simplest kinds of food, which they
obtained by begging, and subjecting themselves to extraordinary
fasts and mortifications. They were known as Sannyasis, or Yogis,
and their severity of life was not so much a penitential life for
past offenses as a means of acquiring abundant religious merits and
superhuman powers. Coupled with these mortifications was the
practice of Yogi (union). They would sit motionless with legs
crossed, and, fixing their gaze intently on an object before them,
would concentrate their thought on some abstract subject until they
lapsed into a trance. In this state they fancied they were united
with the deity, and the fruit of these contemplations was the
pantheistic view of religion which found expression in the
Upanishads, and left a permanent impress on the Brahmin mind.

IV. PANTHEISTIC BRAHMINISM

The marked monotheistic tendency in the later Vedic hymns had made
itself more and more keenly felt in the higher Brahmin circles till
it gave rise to a new deity, a creation of Brahmin priests. This was
Prabjapati, lord of creatures, omnipotent and supreme, later known
as Brahmá, the personal creator of all things. But in thus looking
up to a supreme lord and creator, they were far removed from
Christian monotheism. The gods of the ancient pantheon were not
repudiated, but were worshipped still as the various manifestations
of Brahmá. It was an axiom then, as it has been ever since with the
Hindu mind, that creation out of nothing is impossible. Another
Brahmin principle is that every form of conscious individuality,
whether human or Divine, implies a union of spirit and matter. And
so, outside the small school of thinkers who held matter to be
eternal, those who stood for the supreme personal god explained the
world of visible things and invisible gods as the emanations of
Brahmá. They arrived at a personal pantheism. But speculation did
not end here. To the prevailing school of dreamy Brahmin ascetics,
whose teachings are found in the Upanishads, the ultimate source of
all things was not the personal Brahmá, but the formless,
characterless, unconscious spirit known at Atman (self), or, more
commonly Brahmâ. (Brahmâ is neuter, whereas Brahmá, personal god,
is masculine.) The heavens and the earth, men and gods, even the
personal deity, Brahmá, were but transitory emanations of Brahmâ,
destined in time to lose their individuality and be absorbed into
the great, all-pervading, impersonal spirit. The manifold external
world thus had no real existence. It was Maya, illusion. Brahmâ
alone existed. It alone was eternal, imperishable.

This impersonal pantheism of the Brahmin ascetics led to a new
conception of the end of man and of the way of salvation. The old
way was to escape rebirths and their attendant misery by storing up
merits of good deeds so as to obtain an eternal life of conscious
bliss in heaven. This was a mistake. For so long as man was ignorant
of his identity with Brahmá and did not see that his true end
consisted in being absorbed into the impersonal all-god from which
he sprang; so long as he set his heart on a merely personal
existence, no amount of good works would secure his freedom from
rebirth. By virtue of his good deeds he would, indeed, mount to
heaven, perhaps win a place among the gods. but after a while his
store of merits would give out like oil in a lamp, and he would have
to return once more to life to taste in a new birth the bitterness
of earthly existence. The only way to escape this misery was through
the saving recognition of one's identity with Brahmâ. As so as one
could say from conviction, "I am Brahmâ," the bonds were broken
that held him fast to the illusion of personal immortality and
consequently to rebirth. Thus, cultivating, by a mortified life,
freedom form all desires, man spent his years in peaceful
contemplation till death put an end to the seeming duality and he
was absorbed in Brahmâ like a raindrop in the ocean.

V. EARLY HINDUISM

The pantheistic scheme of salvation just described, generally known
as the Vedanta teaching, found great favor with the Brahmins and has
been maintained as orthodox Brahmin doctrine down to the present
day. But it made little progress outside the Brahmin caste. The mass
of the people had little interest in an impersonal Brahmâ who was
incapable of hearing their prayers, nor had they any relish for a
final end which meant the loss forever of conscious existence. And
so, while the priestly ascetic was chiefly concerned with meditation
on his identity with Brahmâ, and with the practice of mortification
to secure freedom from all desires, the popular mind was still bent
on prayer, sacrifices, and other good works in honor of the Vedic
deities. But at the same time, their faith in the efficacy of these
traditional gods could not be but weakened by the Brahmin teaching
that freedom from rebirth was not to be obtained by acts of worship
to personal deities who were powerless to secure even for themselves
eternal conscious bliss. The result was popular development of
special cults of two of the old gods, now raised to the position of
supreme deity, and credited with the power to secure a lasting life
of happiness in heaven.

It was in the priestly conception of the supreme personal Brahmá
that the popular mind found its model for its new deities. Brahmá
was not a traditional god, and seems never to have been a favorite
object of cult with the people. Even today, there are but two
temples to Brahmá in all India. His subordination to the great
impersonal all-god did not help to recommend him to the popular
mind. Instead we find two of the traditional gods honored with
special cults, which seem to have taken rise independently in two
different parts of the country and, after acquiring a local
celebrity, to have spread in rivalry over the whole land. One of
these gods was the ancient storm-god Rudra, destructive in tempest
and lightning, renewing life in the showers of rain, sweeping in
lonely solitude over mountain and barren waste. As the destroyer,
the reproducer, and the type of the lonely ascetic, this deity
rapidly rose in popular esteem under the name of Siva, the blessed.
The other was Vishnu, originally one of the forms of the son-god, a
mild beneficent deity, whose genial rays brought gladness and growth
to living creatures. His solar origin was lost sight of as he was
raised to the position of supreme deity, but one of his symbols, the
discus, points to his earlier character.

These two rival cults seem to have arisen in the fourth or fifth
century B.C. As in the case of the personal god Brahmá, neither the
worship of Siva nor of Vishnu did away with the honoring of the
traditional gods and goddesses, spirits, heroes, sacred rivers and
mountains and trees, serpents, earth, heaven, sun, moon, and stars.
The pantheism in which the Hindu mind is inevitably cast saw in all
these things emanations of the supreme deity, Siva or Vishnu. In
worshiping any or all, he was but honoring his supreme god. Each
deity was credited with a special heaven, where his devotees would
find after death an unending life of conscious happiness. The rapid
rise in popular esteem of these cults, tending more and more to
thrust Brahminism proper in to the background, was viewed by the
priestly caste with no little concern. To quench these cults was out
of the question; and so, in order to hold them iN at least nominal
allegiance to Brahminism, the supreme god Brahmá was associated with
Vishnu and Siva as a triad of equal and more or less interchangeable
deities in which Brahmá held the office of creator, or rather
evolver, Vishnu of preserver, and Siva of dissolver. This is the
so-called Tri-murti (tri-form), or trinity, altogether different
from the Christian concept of three eternally distinct persons in
one Godhead, and hence offering no legitimate ground for suggesting
a Hindu origin for the Christian doctrine.

More remarkable was the intimate association of other new
deities--the creations of the religious fancies of the common
people--with the gods Siva and Vishnu. With Siva two popular gods
came to be associated as sons. One was Ganesha, lord of troops and
mischievous imps, who has remained ever since a favorite object of
worship and is invoked at the beginning of every undertaking to
ensure success. The other was Scanda, who seems in great measure to
have replaced Indra as the god of battle. Beyond the doubtful
derivation of the name Scanda from Alexander, there is nothing to
indicate that either of these reputed sons of Siva had ever lived
the lives of men. NoT so the gods that enlarged the sphere of
Vishnu's influence. In keeping with Vishnu's position as god of the
people, two of the legendary heroes of the remote past, Rama and
Krishna, whom popular enthusiasm had raised to the rank of gods,
came to be associated with him not as sons, but as his very
incarnations. The incarnation of a god descending from heaven to
assume a human of animal form as a sort of savior, and to achieve
some signal benefit for mankind, is known as an avatar. The idea
antedates Buddhism and, while applied to Siva and other gods, became
above all a characteristic of Vishnu. Popular fancy loved to dwell
on his avatar as a fish to save Manu from the devastating flood, as
a tortoise to recover from the depths of the sea precious
possessions for gods and men, as a boar to raise the submerged earth
above the surface of the waters, but most of all as the god-men Rama
and Krishna, each of whom delivered the people from the yoke of a
tyrant. So popular became the cults of Rama and Krishna that Vishnu
himself was largely lost sight of. In time the Vishnuites became
divided into two rival schisms:the Ramaites, who worshipped Rama as
supreme deity, and the Krishnaites, who gave this honor rather to
Krishna, a division that has persisted down to the present day.

The evidence of the early existence of these innovations on Brahmin
belief is to be found in the two great epics known as the "Ramayana"
and the "Mahabharata." Both are revered by Brahmins, Sivaites and
Vishnuites alike, particularly the latter poem, which is held to be
directly revealed. In the "Ramayana," which belongs to the period
400-300 B.C., the legendary tales of the trials and the triumphs of
the hero Rama and his faithful wife Sita were worked into a highly
artificial romanbtic poem, largely in the interests of Vishnu
worship. The "Mahabharata," the work of many hands, was begun about
the fifth century B.C. under Brahmin influence, and in the folowing
centuries received additions and modifications, in the interests
now of Vishnuism now of Sivaism, till it assumed its final shape in
the sixth century of the Christian Era. It is a huge conglomeration
of stirring adventure, popular legend, myth, and religious
speculation. The myth centers chiefly around the many-sided struggle
for supremacy between the evil tyrants of the land and the hero
Arjuna, aided by his four brothers. The role that Krishna plays is
not an integral part of the story and seems to have been
interpolated after the substance of the epic had been written. He is
the charioteer of Arjuna and at the same time acts as his religious
advisor. Of his numerous religious instructions, the most important
is his metrical treatise known as the "Bhagavad-gita," the Song of
the Blessed One, a writing that has exercised a profound influence
on religious thought in India. It dates from the second or third
century of the Christian era, being a poetic version of a late
Upanishad, with its pantheistic doctrine so modified as to pass for
a personal revelation of Krishna. While embodying the noblest
features of Brahmin ethics, and insisting on the faithful
performance of caste-duties, it proclaims Krishna to be the superior
personal all-god who, by the bestowal of special grace helps on his
votaries to the attainment of eternal bliss. As an important means
to this end, it inculcates the virtue of Bhakti, that is a loving
devotion to the deity, analogous to the Christian virtue of charity.

Unhappily for the later development of Vishnuism, the Krishna of the
"Bhagavad-gita" was not the popular conception. Like most legendary
heroes of folk-lore, his character was in keeping with the crude
morals of the primitive age that first sounded his praises. The
narrative portions of the epic show him to have been sly and
unscrupulous, guilty in word and deed of acts which the higher
Brahmin conscience would reprove. But it is in the fuller legendary
story of his life as given in the so-called "Hari-vansa," a later
supplement to the epic, and also in some of the Puranas of the ninth
and tenth centuries of our era, that the character of the popular
Krishna appears in its true light. Here we learn that Krishna was
one of eight sons of noble birth, whom a Herod-like tyrant was bent
on destroying. The infant god was saved from the wicked designs of
the king by being secretly substituted for a herdsman's babe.
Krishna grew up among the simple country-people, performing
prodigies of valor, and engaging in many amorous adventures with the
Gopis, the wives and daughters of the herdsmen. Eight of these were
his favorites, but one he loved best of all, Radha. Krishna finally
succeeded in killing the king, and brought peace to the kingdom.

Between this deified Hindu Hercules and Our Divine Lord, there is no
ground for comparison, one only for contrast. That the idea of
incarnate deity should be found in pre-Christian Hindu thought is
not so remarkable when we consider that it answers to the yearning
of the human heart for union with God. But what is at first sight
astonishing is to find in the religious writings subsequent to the
"Mahabharata" legendary tales of Krishna that are almost identical
with the stories of Christ in the canonical and apocryphal Gospels.
From the birth of Krishna in a stable, and his adoration by
shepherds and magi, the leader is led on through a series of events
the exact counterparts of those related of Our Divine Lord. Writers
hostile to Christianity seized on this chain or resemblances, too
close to be mere coincidence, in order to convict the Gospel writers
of plagiarism from Hindu originals. But the very opposite resulted.
All Indianists of authority are agreed that these Krishna legends
are not earlier than the seventh century of the Christian Era, and
must have been borrowed from Christian sources.

VI. LATER, OR SECTARIAN HINDUISM

The steady weakening of Brahmin influence, in consequence of the
successive waves of foreign conquest, made it possible for the
religious preferences of the huge, heterogeneous population of India
to assert themselves more strongly. Both Sivaism and Vishnuism
departed more and more strongly from tradition Brahminism, and
assumed a decidedly sectarian character towards the older religion
and also towards each other. With this weakening of Brahmin
influence they absorbed the grosser elements of low-grade popular
worship, and became abused by the accretion of immoral rites and
groveling superstitions. While, on the one hand, the practice of
asceticism was pushed to its utmost extremes of fanaticism, on the
other the doctrine of bhakti was perverted into a system of gross
sexual indulgence, for which the amours of Krishna and the Gopis
served as the model and sanction. The Brahmin-caste distinctions
were broken down, and an equality of all men and women was asserted,
at least during the ceremonies of public worship. The Brahmin rites
were in great measure replaced by others particular to each cult and
held to be all-sufficient for salvation. Everywhere splendid temples
arose to Siva, Vishnu, and his two human avatars; idols and phallic
symbols innumerable filled the land; and each rival cult lauded its
own special deity as supreme, subordinating all others to it, and
looking down with more or less contempt on forms of worship other
than its own. One factor which contributed strongly to the
degradation of these sectarian forms of religion was the veneration
of the Sakti, or female side, of these deities. Popular theology
would not rest until each deity was supplemented with a wife, in
whom the active nature of the god was personified. With Brahmá was
associated an ancient river-goddess, Sarasvati, honored as the
patroness of letters. Vishnu's Sakti was Sri, or Lakshmi, patroness
of good fortune. With Siva the destroyer there was associated the
terrible, blood-thirsty, magical goddess Durga, or Kali, formerly
delighting in human victims, now appeased with sacrifices of goats
and buffaloes. Rama had his consort, Sita, and Krishna his favorite
Gopi, Radha. The worship of these Saktis, particularly Siva's
consort Durga-Kali, degenerated into shocking orgies of drunkenness
and sexual immorality, which even today are the crying scandal of
Hinduism.

Such were the sectarian developments of post-epic times. They found
expression in the inferior, quasi-historic Puranas, of the seventh
and following centuries, and in the Tantras, which are more modern
still, and teach the symbolic magic of Sakti-worship. Neither of
these classes of writings is regarded by orthodox Brahmin as canonical.

Of the two hundred million adherents of Hinduism today, only a few
hundred thousand can be called orthodox Brahmin worshipers. Sivaism
and Vishnuism have overshadowed the older religion like a rank
growth of poisonous weeds. In their main outlines, these two great
sects have retained the characteristics of the Purana period, but
differences of view on minor points have lead to a multiplication of
schismatic divisions, especially among Vishnu-worshipers. Both
sects, which today are fairly tolerant of each other, have a number
of devotional and liturgical practices that are alike in kind,
though marked by differences in sectarian belief. Both Sivaite and
Vishnuite lay great stress on the frequent recital of the numerous
names of their respective supreme gods, and to facilitate this
piety, each carries with him, often about his neck, a rosary,
varying in material and the number of beads according as it is
dedicated to Siva or Vishnu. Each sect has an initiation rites,
which is conferred upon the young at the age of reason and in which
the officiating guru puts a rosary around the neck of the applicant
and whispers into his ear the mantra, or sacred motto, the recital
of which serves as a profession of faith and is of daily obligation.
Another rite common to both is that in which the presiding officer
brands on the body of the worshiper with hot metal stamps the sacred
symbols of his sect, the trident and the linga of Siva, or the
discus and conch-shell (or lotus) of Vishnu.

But in their highest act of ceremonial worship the two sects differ
radically. The Sivaite takes his white stone pebble, the
conventional phallic emblem which he always carries with him, and
while muttering his mantra, sprinkles it with water and applies to
it cooling Bilva leaves. Owing to its simplicity and cheapness, this
rite is much in vogue with the ignorant lower classes. The Vishnu
rite is less degrading but more childish. It consists of an
elaborate and costly worship of the temple image of Vishnu, or more
often of Rama, or Krishna. The image is daily awakened, undressed,
bathed, decked with rich robes and adorned with necklaces,
bracelets, crowns of gold and precious stones, fed with choice kinds
of food, honored with flowers, lights, an incense, and then
entertained with vocal and instrumental music, and with dancing by
the temple girls of doubtful virtue, consecrated to this service. As
Krishna is generally worshipped in the form of a child-image, his
diversion consists largely in the swinging of his image, the
spinning of tops, and other games dear to the heart of the child.

Siva, too, has his temples, vying in magnificence with those of
Vishnu, but in all these, the holy place is the linga-shrine, and
the temple worship consists in the application of water and Bilva
leaves to the stone symbol. The interior walls of these, and of
Vishnu temples as well, are covered with shocking representations of
sexual passion. and yet, strange to say, these forms of religion,
while giving a sanction to the indulgence of the lowest passions, at
the same time inspire other devotees to the practice of the severest
asceticism. They wander about in lonely silence, naked and filthy,
their hair matted from long neglect, their bodies reduced to mere
skin and bones by dint of incredible fasts. They will stand
motionless for hours under the blazing son, with their emaciated
arms uplifted toward heaven. Some go about with face ever turned
upwards. Some are known to have kept their fists tightly clenched
until their growing nails protruded through the backs of their
hands.

VII. REFORM MOVEMENTS

Enlightened Hindus of modern times have made attempts to institute a
reform in Hinduism by rejecting all idolatrous and immoral rites,
and by setting up a purely monotheistic form of worship. Of these,
the earliest and most noted was the so-called Brahmá Samaj
(Congregation of Brahmá), founded in Calcutta in 1828, by the
learned Rammohun Roy. He tried to combine a Unitarian form of
Christianity with the Brahmin conception of the supreme personal
God. After his death in 1833, differences of view as to the nature
of God, the authority of the Vedas, and the obligation of
caste-customs caused the society to split up into a number of small
congregations. At present there are more than a hundred independent
theistic congregations in India. Some, like the Arya Samaj, rest on
the sole authority of the Vedas. Others are eclectic, even to the
extent of choosing for devotional reading in their public services
passages from the Avesta, Koran, and Bible. Few of them are
altogether free from the taint of pantheism, and, being more like
clubs for intellectual and moral improvement than for ritualistic
forms of worship, they make but little progress in the way of conversion.

In short, Brahminism cannot succeed in reforming itself. Its earlier
sacred books are steeped in the polytheism out of which it grew, and
the pantheistic view of the world, to which it was afterwards
committed, has been like a dead weight dragging it hopelessly into
the stagnant pool of superstition, pessimism, and immorality. In
virtue of its pantheistic attitude, there is no form of religion,
high or low, that cannot be tolerated and incorporated into its
capacious system. The indifference of Brahminism to the gross buses
of Hinduism is, after all, but a reflex of the indifference of its
supreme god. Sin loses most of its hideousness when it can be traced
ultimately to the great impersonal Brahmâ. There is but one form of
religion that has any prospect of reforming the religious life of
India, and that is the Roman Catholic. For the shadow, pantheistic
deity it can set form the One, Eternal, Personal Spirit and creator;
for the crude Tri-murti, the sublime Trinity; and for the coarse and
degrading avatars of Vishnu, the incarnation of the Son of God. It
can replace the idolatrous and immoral Hindu rites with its own
imposing liturgy, and substitute the Cross for the abominable linga.

Brahminism, being a natural religion and a privilege of Hindu birth,
has never made any concerted attempt at proselytizing in foreign
lands. But some years ago steps were taken by a few individuals of
England to foist upon English-speaking people a new religious system
embodying the pantheistic belief and magical superstition of the
Vedanta school of Brahminism. This new system, known as Theosophy,
was to embrace within its fold members of every form of religion,
reconciling all differences of creed in the pantheistic view that
all deities, high and low, are but transitory emanations of the
supreme, incomprehensible Reality, devotion to which was the highest
religion. This quasi-cult, which also made pretensions to the
exercise of magical powers, soon met the ridicule and obloquy it
deserved. It is practically obsolete at the present day.